Sawbones

by William W. Johnstone

  Most patrons wanted a shot of coffin varnish and a chance to brag until he got too drunk to stand up. Ben had never considered a job in a bar. He had always thought he would end up working his pa’s farm and only going into town for supplies. He let Seth hurry off to the gunsmithy and turned toward the Golden Gate, a ramshackle place owing its name to the yellow-painted batwing doors leading in.

  It took a considerable amount of courage for him to go through those swinging doors. The typical odors hit him like a blow to the head. Cigar smoke. Spilled beer. A sharp tang of something like acid in his nostrils.

  “Come on in, mister, and find yourself a spot at the bar. I don’t reckon you’ll have trouble staking out a claim.” The woman speaking to him had her gray-streaked brown hair pulled back in a severe bun. She worked to wipe clean a shot glass and almost dropped it. Her gnarled fingers were so crippled with arthritis that Ben wondered how she even held the glass, much less polished it. Too much makeup turned her face into something he expected to see in a mortuary. If she smiled, cracks had to appear. In spite of her advancing age and lack of skill applying cosmetics, Ben thought she was strangely handsome—in her day he might even have called her beautiful.

  “I’m lookin’ for the owner.”

  “Look no more. I’m Hattie Malone. I inherited the Golden Gate and have been running it for a spell now. What’s your pleasure?”

  “A job.”

  “Do tell?” Sharp brown eyes fixed on him.

  He felt like a bug being studied under a magnifying glass.

  “What do you drink? There’s no reason not to be friendly while we talk this over.”

  “I’m not much of a drinker. Water’s good.”

  “Water’s good if you don’t have a nickel for a glass of beer, which I think’s the case. Is that it?”

  Ben nodded, hardly trusting his voice. He felt as if she bored into his skull and read everything as plain as if it had been printed in a newspaper. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. She drew two beers, then came around the bar to set them on a nearby table. She sank into a chair and pointed to the one across from her. Ben took it. He cradled the beer in both hands, hardly daring to take a sip.

  “Go on, drink up. It’s not gonna kill you. Not today.” She drained half her glass, smacked her lips, and put the glass onto the table with a distinct click.

  Ben hesitantly tried the beer, then drank more. “That’s good. I expected it to be bitter.”

  “I make my own beer. I mix my own whiskey, too, even if I serve it in bottles with labels saying it came from Kentucky. The brandy is harder to make, so I charge more for it. It’s hard to get nitric acid to give it the right kick.”

  He wondered if she was joking, then decided she wasn’t.

  “You’re mighty open about your business, Miss Malone.”

  “It’s Mrs. Malone, and my old man took off for the goldfields. He left me with the Golden Gate and more debt than any two men could pay off.”

  Ben smiled a little. “Good thing two men weren’t runnin’ this place. I’d lay odds that debt wasn’t more’n one woman could pay off.”

  “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

  “Ben Lunsford.” He considered for a moment, then half rose and thrust out his hand.

  She shook, but the grip was weak from the malformed fingers. “I’ve found the smart ones try to steal me blind.”

  “Then I’m not a smart one.” He sipped at his beer. “I’m a real smart one who knows better than to steal.”

  She gave him an appraising look. Hattie raised her glass and held it out. It took him a second to realize she wanted to propose a toast. He lifted his glass and waited.

  “To the Golden Gate’s newest employee.” She clinked glasses with him and drained hers.

  He was slower to follow.

  “You really aren’t much of a drinker, are you?”

  “Never had the chance, not on the farm, nor during the war.”

  “Don’t get started. It’s a vice that will rot your liver and give you the collywobbles. A dollar a day, meals, and a cot in the back room. There’s a scattergun under the bar. Any damn fool tries to break in, I expect you to use it. If another damn fool tries to start a fight, use the bung starter on his head to end it real quick. No killing unless it’s required.” She gave him another hard look. “You’ve killed men?”

  “During the war.” Ben felt a momentary surprise that he had never thought before that the Yankees he had shot could be considered as having been killed. Looking down the barrel and pulling the trigger, there had been a detachment that had escaped him. If he had ever run a bluecoat through with a fixed bayonet and felt the blood squirt all over him, maybe the death would have meant something different, something less detached.

  “Working as a barkeep might seem like being in a war on the bad nights. There’s a canvas apron behind the bar. Put it on and learn where everything is. The rush starts in a couple hours.”

  “Where are you going to be?”

  “With you tending bar, I can finally grab a little sleep. Be here when I get back or I swear I will track you to the ends of the earth and make you wish your mama had strangled you at birth.” With that, Hattie left.

  Ben Lunsford felt a little lost in the cavernous saloon all by himself. Then he set to work, doing what he knew was necessary. Sweeping, getting fresh sawdust on the floor, polishing glasses, trying to read the smeared labels on the liquor bottles. Since most of the contents looked and smelled the same, he doubted there was much variation. For all he knew, it all came from the same keg. He hesitated sampling each bottle to see if the taste from one matched that in all the others. To do so meant he’d be drunker than a lord by the time Hattie returned.

  He found himself liking the physical work. Being by himself helped his spirits, too. Taking care of himself was a chore at the best of times but continually watching to be sure Seth didn’t get himself in trouble—or worse—weighed more on him than he realized. The responsibility was gone, for awhile.

  “How do you do it, Doc? You’re always there for me. For Seth. It must—” He broke off his self-lecture when a definite rap-rap-rap came at the back door.

  He grabbed the sawed-off shotgun, went into the storeroom, and carefully slid the locking bar away. A swift kick moved it out of the way so the door opened fast and quiet. He wasn’t sure who was more startled by the pointed shotgun, him or the young woman in a caramel brown gingham dress and pert yellow bonnet. She stood with her hands clutched in front of her. The sight of the shotgun made her bite her lower lip, but she never retreated.

  “Please, sir, I expected Hattie to answer as she always does. This is Thursday, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t rightly say, ma’am. One day’s like another to me.” He shifted the shotgun away from her. “Sorry. I didn’t know who’d be poundin’ on the door like you was.”

  “You are new? Hattie’s just hired you?”

  “That’s right.” Ben tried to get his wits about him. The woman’s dark hair poked out from under the bonnet and haloed her perfect face. Her cheeks weren’t rouged but naturally red. Eyes bluer than the sky fixed on him. Considering the fright he must have given her, she recovered fast.

  “Has she mentioned to you my, uh, my purchase every Thursday afternoon about this time?”

  “She neglected that, ma’am.”

  “Please. I am Amelia Parker.”

  Ben introduced himself, put the shotgun just inside the door, and wiped his hands on the apron. He licked his lips and finally realized he was staring.

  “Sorry, Miz Parker. You want to step in? There ain’t nobody in the saloon. Or did you want to wait for Hattie? She went out to get some sleep ’fore things got busy tonight.”

  “She must trust you, if she left you in charge. Even if there aren’t any customers right now.” It was the lovely woman’s turn to shift about nervously. “I . . . I came by to pick up a special package.”

  Ben said nothing. He wondered what Amelia Parker migh
t get from a saloon that required her to sneak about. No respectable woman entered any saloon. The Golden Gate likely had the same penalty to a God-fearing woman’s reputation that others did elsewhere. But why had she come around like this? He didn’t smell alcohol on her, and she looked the picture of health. Ben doubted anyone patronizing a saloon on a regular basis was half as hale and hearty.

  “I . . . Hattie sells me a bottle of whiskey. A full quart. It’s always wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She keeps it by the door until I come for it.”

  “Every Thursday.”

  “Yes, every Thursday. The whiskey lasts a week.”

  Ben Lunsford stepped back and looked around. A crate near the door held the package as Amelia Parker described it. He picked it up and shook it. The sloshing sound told him it was likely the whiskey the woman sought. He held it out.

  She silently took it, tucked it under her left arm and fumbled about in a pocket. As if it might burn her fingers, she thrust out a greenback for him to take.

  “Do you get change? Look, if you want to wait for Hattie, I can—”

  “No. This is the price I agreed upon after it . . . after it happened.”

  Ben held his tongue. If she wanted to lift the veil on her mysterious need to buy whiskey out the back door of the Golden Gate, she would do it on her own.

  “It’s for my father,” she blurted. “He was hurt badly a month ago. A wagon rolled over both his legs and left him an invalid.” She cradled the wrapped bottle as if it were a baby. “This is the only way to kill the pain, at least for a short while.”

  “What’s the doctor have to say?”

  She laughed with a harshness that shocked him. “The doctor left to find gold. Fixing up people with broken bones or sick from the grippe wasn’t good enough for him anymore.” She looked down and went on in a low voice. “Thank you. I shouldn’t burden you with my troubles.”

  “I know a doctor. A good one. He might be able to help out.”

  Ben Lunsford felt as if the sun had come out from behind a dark cloud as Amelia’s face lit up with hope.

  CHAPTER 23

  Milo Hannigan started to speak up, then took a drink of the bitter beer so he wouldn’t make a spectacle of himself. The last thing he wanted was to be center of attention in the bar when everyone else wanted to run their mouths off about Samuel Knight. He had come into Pine Knob wondering if he could find out how Knight had convinced the Lunsfords to hightail it. The story of how Knight had gunned down Hector Alton grew with every telling. The best Hannigan figured, none of the men doing the boasting about Knight’s speed had seen the gunfight.

  What he wondered most about was if Knight had shot Alton in the back. That was the way most disputes were settled. Squaring off, pulling iron, firing—that proved too dangerous for most men to tolerate. The idea wasn’t to outdraw and outgun your opponent but to be the one who walked away from the fight. That usually meant an ambush of some kind, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Not if so many believed the two men had faced each other and Knight had beaten Alton to his six-shooter.

  Hannigan worked on his beer, turned warm since he had nursed it for almost an hour as he listened to the stories.

  “You mean to tell me the man who used to be a doctor beat a gun slick to the draw?” He had to throw the question out to see who answered.

  “I was there at the city hall a few seconds after the killing,” spoke up a man with a deputy’s badge pinned on his vest. “I didn’t see it, but from the way Gerald Donnelly blubbered on and on, Alton drew first. At least he cleared leather and shot first. Dr. Knight was slower but more accurate.”

  “That makes the killing self-defense. Why’s the law after him then?” Hannigan watched the lawman closely for any hint that he had been identified as an outlaw—and one with whom the killer had ridden. As far as the deputy was concerned, Hannigan was another drifter coming through Pine Knob trying to find a place to make a stand in the Reconstructed South.

  “Oh, Dr. Knight’s done too many people wrong. He shot off Donnelly’s finger out of pure spite.” The deputy grinned crookedly, showing a missing front tooth and another that had almost rotted from his head. “I wouldn’t throw him in the hoosegow for that. It ought to be open season on all carpetbaggers, but Donnelly calls the shots in town now. He says jump and the mayor asks how high on the way up.”

  “Because of the Union soldiers?”

  The deputy made a sour face. Hannigan motioned for the barkeep to bring over another shot of whiskey for the man. It took a couple minutes for the bartender to work his way down the length of the bar and refill the shot glass. The deputy held his own counsel the whole while, but the instant his tongue licked at the rim of the glass and he tasted the whiskey, he got mighty talkative again.

  “That’s got to be the answer. The threat of them blue bellies pouring into town and making life hell for us keeps the mayor in line. The marshal don’t much care, but then he don’t much care about anything these days. Him and the mayor—they’re brothers—don’t get on too well anymore.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Marshal’s wife upped and died a few months back. Took the life right out of him.” The deputy looked around. “I’ve been angling to get his job. Let him retire, me, I pin on his badge. I’d double my pay all the way to thirty dollars a month.”

  “With the doc gone, there doesn’t seem to be much call for a marshal, much less a marshal and a deputy.”

  “Two deputies,” the man said. “Rory’s the marshal’s nephew. No way could he hold a job doing anything else. He’s not right in the head, not since he got a fever when he was fourteen.” The deputy sighed. “I suppose I’d have to keep him on if I got to be marshal. I’d as soon keep for myself what he’s getting paid, but it’s not too much since Rory lives with his ma—the marshal’s sister. She takes good care of him. I surely would not mind her takin’ good care of me, if you follow my meanin’.”

  “So Doc Knight is a wanted man but nobody from this town’s on the trail after him.”

  “We got up a posse a while back, but all we found was a bunch of drifters outside of town. We chased them off.”

  Hannigan tensed. He hadn’t realized the deputy was in the posse, but if he had been, the huge amount of whiskey fogged his memory.

  “Drifters, eh?”

  “That’s the way it’ll go around here, until them carpetbaggers steal all they can carry and go on their way.” The deputy looked sharply at Hannigan. He sucked in his breath and slipped his hand down to the pistol at his side. “You’re not one of them, are you? Naw, the only Northerners are Donnelly and the Federal soldiers. I can tell by your accent you’re from Georgia.”

  “North Carolina.” Hannigan had no desire to get into a “Where are you from?” discussion with the lawman. “You’re a Pine Knob man, born and bred, aren’t you?”

  “Naw, I came up from the Hill Country. Don’t know why I left. Just a change of scenery appealed to me, I suppose. It’s quieter here, that’s for sure.”

  “Nothing ever gets stored in that bank, does it? No big shipments of gold or anything important.”

  “Nope, nothing like that. Not until . . .” The deputy’s words trailed off as he stared into his empty glass.

  Hannigan gestured for the barkeep to pour another, then leave the half bottle. He waited for the deputy to help himself to another shot of the popskull before edging him back toward discussing what might be stored in the bank’s safe.

  “You’re going to be standing guard by your lonesome, I take it. Rory’s not up for it and everything you say about the marshal, well, he’s too despondent to do a good job. That’ll be a real chore.”

  “Could be. The captain’s not said how much money’ll be moving through town. It’s not real money, though. Just greenbacks.”

  “Issued on the local bank?”

  “The Federals want their bills to be uniform. All these are from a St. Louis bank, or so they say. I’ve never seen one of them greenba
cks.”

  “With so much responsibility, you might want to cut back on the liquor. It wouldn’t do showing up to stand guard if you have a snootful of tarantula juice.”

  “The money’s not coming in until tomorrow sometime.” The deputy almost fell as he turned to point toward the bank. His voice was clear and the words weren’t slurred, but he had knocked back a drink or two more than his body could handle. Hannigan helped him to a chair before his legs gave out under him.

  “That much money’ll be guarded by the army. How many men’s Captain Norwood assigning to help you?” Such a direct question ought to have caused a suspicious man to clam up.

  The deputy was past controlling his mouth. “Only a couple. They don’t want to make it look like any kind of big deal, not after they laid that trap in the stagecoach and didn’t catch a single robber. The captain’s still a mite touchy about that. Donnelly doesn’t josh him, but the junior officers all make snide remarks. Nothing the captain can bring them up on charges over, but he’s a laughingstock because of it. Not that he wasn’t before. You ever see how he goes around lookin’ like he’s headin’ for the parade grounds?”

  “Do tell.” Hannigan felt a mite better that the captain had paid some price for the ambuscade. Having his gang all shot up had almost cost him their leadership.

  Lattimer was back in the saddle, Nott wanted to kill rather than rob, and Porkchop might never be healed enough to sit up straight. The bullets in the man’s gut had taken a lot of years off his life, but he hadn’t lit out like Knight and the Lunsfords. That showed some loyalty. What Hannigan needed to cement his control was a big holdup. Enough time had passed that nobody who wasn’t in the posse even remembered the attempted stagecoach robbery.

  Hannigan appreciated how Knight had erased a failed robbery from the town’s memory and replaced it with talk about a doctor turned gunfighter. Hector Alton hadn’t died in vain.

  “Have another drink,” Hannigan offered, pouring a fresh shot into the glass. “And then you can tell me about the women in this here town. What are they like? What do they like? What would it take to get them to like me?”